Page:Korean folk tales- imps, ghosts and fairies (IA koreanfolktalesi00impaiala).pdf/42



[—Orientals say that among the long-lived creatures are the tortoise, the deer, the crane and the fox, and that these long-lived ones attain to special states of spiritual refinement. If trees exist through long ages they become coal; if pine resin endures it becomes amber; so the fox, if it lives long, while it never becomes an angel, or spiritual being, as a man does, takes on various metamorphoses, and appears on earth in various forms.]

Yi Kwai was the son of a minister. He passed his examinations and held high office. When his father was Governor of Pyong-an Province, Kwai was a little boy and accompanied him. The Governor's first wife being dead, Kwai's stepmother was the mistress of the home. Once when His Excellency had gone out on an inspecting tour, the yamen was left vacant, and Kwai was there with her. In the rear garden of the official quarters was a pavilion, called the Hill Pagoda, that was connected by a narrow gateway with the